"What those people don't do, but Hagee does, is transform millions of people into lovers of the Jewish people."

Steven Weiss, on the misunderstood relationship between Christian Zionists, and the Jews:

Christian Zionist theology aside, there's still the controversy over Hagee himself, appropriately summarized by the New Republic's Jonathan Chait. Hagee's said a lot to infuriate Jews: that the Holocaust was God's way of promoting Zionism and that Jews brought anti-Semitism upon themselves through their own faithless actions. I'm not going to defend Hagee's words here, because I don't agree with them and think he should never have said them. As a descendant of survivors of the Holocaust and pogroms—and, more importantly, of many nonsurvivors—I find them offensive.

But people say and believe a great many things I find offensive all the time, from pulpits Jewish and otherwise. What those people don't do, but Hagee does, is transform millions of people into lovers of the Jewish people. While watching Hagee speak live at the CUFI summit, inveighing against anti-Semitism and declaring, to the applause of thousands of Christians, "If a line has to be drawn, then draw it around both Christians and Jews, around Americans and Israelis," I got chills.

Read the whole thing.

ADDED: In a related story, it has been said that those who hate and destroy other groups of human beings they deem beneath them, hate and destroy themselves. I'm not sure how the quote really goes, but it's true. It really is true.

HT: Jaltcoh